POLICE BLOTTER | April 23, 2014

Tuesday, April 22, 2014 3:36 PM

This list of crimes was compiled from censored police reports and written by Lydia Sprague

Road rage

An officer reports he was in his patrol car on April 15 at 2:52 p.m. when he saw some suspicious activity. He was driving southbound on Fifth Avenue North, approaching John Street, when a car suddenly sped through the red light for eastbound traffic on John Street and turned south onto Fifth Avenue. The car was followed by a van.

The car cut to the right of traffic and made a quick right turn onto westbound Denny Way. The van’s occupants jumped out and told the officer that the driver of the car had just shot out their van window. The victims said they were not seriously hurt.

Nearby officers were quickly alerted to the situation and began looking for the suspect’s car.

A back passenger window in the van was shattered, and there was a bullet hole in the bottom of the window frame. There were three people in the car, two of whom had minor cuts and scrapes — one from broken glass; the other said he thought he’d been grazed by a bullet.

The victims said they’d been driving eastbound on Mercer Street, heading toward Interstate 5, when the suspect’s vehicle cut them off in traffic and the van’s driver honked the car horn. Soon after, the suspect pulled alongside the victims and shot a pistol at their car, shattering the window.

The suspect shot through his own windshield to hit the victim’s vehicle, the victims said.

The suspect made a U-turn on Mercer and headed back west. The victims followed until they flagged down the officer.

The responding officer was able to review his in-car video of the car to verify the victims’ description of the suspect’s vehicle.

Police examined the inside of the victims’ vehicle and located a bullet fragment resting on top of the console between the driver and front passenger seats.

Storage-unit break-in

On April 1 at 1 p.m., police responded to a building in the 200 block of West Comstock Street after a resident called to report his storage unit had been broken into.

The door to the storage unit had visible pry marks, but the door between the storage area and the parking garage it was in was not damaged in any way. Police suspect the burglar had a key for this door.

The officer observed that most of other storage units also had pry marks.

Another resident informed responding police that several lock boxes were broken into recently outside the building.

The victim said that many items were missing, including a set of golf clubs worth $1,600 and three bags of tools he estimated to be worth $2,500 dollars.

Police advised the victim to check online auction sites and local pawn shops and to call 911 if he located any of his stolen items.

Cut screen

At 3 p.m. on April 10, a woman in the 3200 block of 27th Avenue West arrived home to discover that the screen on her door had been cut and the back door kicked in.

When she entered the house, she found her home ransacked and many items, including jewelry, had been stolen.

Police responded that evening and were able to find several fingerprints in the house.

Mail theft

On April 3 at 7:46 p.m., police were dispatched to a building in the 1200 block of Queen Anne Avenue North for a report of recent burglaries.

The building manager told police that, over the previous two weeks, he has found six mailboxes pried open and damaged.

He also said that someone has been taking the outgoing mail.

The manager also said that, sometime within the previous two days, someone attempted to break into his workroom.

He said he arrived at work that morning to find the top lock pried off of the door. The burglar was unable to enter the room, and nothing was taken.

Police advised the manager to tell the building’s residents to be extra vigilant about whom they let in the building.

Open door

A couple in the 4000 block of 33rd Avenue West called 911 on April 1 after arriving home to find their home had been broken into.

The female victim said that she was the last to leave the house, at 8 a.m., and the male victim said that he arrived home around 3 p.m. He noticed that the front door was ajar and unlocked, but there was no damage to the door or the doorjamb.

It appeared that items were only taken from the living room, including two laptop computers.